


A Shabby Trick to Play

by Margo_Kim



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Amnesia, Blood Magic, During Canon, Established Relationship, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, POV Dorian Pavus
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-12
Updated: 2018-04-30
Packaged: 2019-03-17 04:59:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,968
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13651920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Margo_Kim/pseuds/Margo_Kim
Summary: Dorian woke up in a room he didn’t recognize with a man he didn’t know. The situation, familiar in the broad strokes to him, becomes much more complicated when he realizes the extent to which the man knows him.





	1. Chapter 1

Dorian woke up in a room he didn’t recognize with a man he didn’t know.

In broad terms, this was an unsettling but unsurprising situation. Dorian had woke up in many strange rooms with many strange men, many of whom were as eager for Dorian to leave as Dorian was to go. This man was at least still asleep, which made things easier. Dorian was especially grateful for his bedfellow’s slumber on this particular occasion, as it gave him some extra space to think on the specific layers of his current predicament. Just to name one complication unique to this situation, the men Dorian had previously slept with had all been human.

Waking up next to a qunari. In Ferelden. In a room that had a hole in the ceiling. Dorian had to applaud himself more than usual—when he decided to flee south and shame his family (admittedly two different decisions), he had pursued his new path with gusto.

Qunari, though. That was a problem. Dorian checked his body, but the aches he found were consistent his experiences on mornings like these. He actually felt better than he normally did, without even the hint of a hangover and none of the soreness that he accepted as the necessary byproduct of hurried, drunken sex. The qunari did not seem to have abducted and had his wicked way with him (and after the relief that followed that conclusion, Dorian enjoyed a pang of disappointment—now there was a fantasy for a cold night). And the qunari might not be qunari at all; he could be Vasoth or Tal Vasoth, utterly qunless and not at all inclined towards snapping Tevinter necks. Wasn’t that a nice thought? The stranger was certainly sleeping heavily enough—his head thrown back as far as his horns would allow, his neck bared— to imply some trust in Dorian. Certainly not qunari then.

Not that the rest of Thedas was inclined to trust Dorian either.

Either way, Dorian’s bedfellow was quite warm. It almost made up for the hole in the ceiling. Dorian had no doubt sought out that warmth in the night, after he’d fallen asleep, or passed out, or feigned either until his partner felt too awkward to make him leave. Dorian been sleeping hard for the last weeks on the road south to Redcliffe. A proper bed for a night, even in a snowbound hovel like this, was worth the discomfort of the morning after. Unfortunately, curled as intently as he was against the massive man’s side, extricating himself unnoticed was going to prove difficult. The possible-qunari would almost certainly wake. Worst case scenario, he had abducted Dorian and waking him would invite his fearsome, mighty wrath; best case scenario, there’d be small talk. Neither outcome was how Dorian wished to start the day.

Still. The possible-qunari slept so prettily. He breathed loudly, the way some men did when they slept and forgot secrecy. Dorian didn’t know exactly how to describe it, except that he could always tell when Rilienus had passed from resting to sleeping when he began to breathe so heavily, his mind in the Fade, his body beyond caring for muffling himself. Dorian’s cheek rested upon the stranger’s arm, Dorian’s arm thrown over the stranger’s chest, so he watched and felt the chest rise and fall. He’d had a horribly embarrassing crush on a blacksmith as a child, the one who shoed his mounts. The stranger’s chest put him in mind of the blacksmith’s bellows. The easy strength. The steady force.

Dorian stopped his snort before he could make a sound. Leave it to him to romanticize a man he could not even remember approaching at the bar. Dorian couldn’t even be sure the man had fucked him well.

(Dorian’s body felt sure on that matter, but it could have just been the bed. After two weeks of bedrolls on top of rocks, any soft surface would feel like half a dozen orgasms and a good massage afterwards.)

He had to move. Felix was waiting for him in Redcliff, and his last message, written in the careful blandness of a missive Alexius would likely read, had implied the situation there was spiraling downwards. Dorian couldn’t leave Felix there alone. He certainly couldn’t do it because he’d decided to have a post-fuck lie-in.

The fact that Dorian was waiting on the intrepid mail couch, which he’d been assured the night before would not leave until two in the afternoon, hardly mattered.  

Now the difficult part, the leaving while the bedpartner slept on. Dorian shifted cautiously. The bedfellow woke. His breathing changed the instant Dorian moved with intent. It would have been impressive if it hadn’t been so irksome.

“Hey,” the stranger said sleepily. It was a good voice, round and full as the body it came out of. Dorian would have still preferred not to have heard it. The stranger yawned till his jaw cracked. His arm came over to wrap around Dorian’s waist. He was warm and heavy with sleep; Dorian couldn’t help but nuzzle a little closer. As long as he was trapped here anyway.

“Hey,” Dorian replied in kind. It seemed a safe enough response. “You sleep lightly.”

“Usually, yeah. Slept in good this morning though.” His voice was warm and heavy as well. “You did too.”

Dorian pushed himself up. The arm did not hold him down, just held him, looped casually as a sash. Sitting up, he got his first proper (or at least sober) look at the stranger’s face—and what a sight it was. Rugged, that was what you called it when scars just made you more handsome. His gaze stuttered a moment on the eye, or lack thereof, but the scarring just gave the stranger a perpetual wink. He had expected from the body to find a fearsome face, and he didn’t doubt the face’s ability for fear, not being underneath horns like _those_ and above a body like _that_ , but it certainly wasn’t a very threatening face at the moment. Dopey, more than anything, looking up at Dorian like that.

Before Dorian could stop himself, he brushed his fingers against a scar slashed across the stranger’s collarbone. What a topography this body had. “If you mean that you expected me gone by now,” Dorian said, following the scar like the map of a river, “I’ll have you know I was on my way out.”

“I’m not kicking you out,” the stranger said instantly, easily.

“Oh?” asked Dorian, whose heart had fluttered strangely at the ease with which the man protested his leaving. “Did you wake up to hold me captive then?”

“I’m not gonna make you stay if you don’t want to stay,” the stranger’s mouth said. _But you should stay_ , his fingers murmured, tapping against Dorian’s waist like they were trying not to grab.

With a fierceness like sudden hunger, a stab beneath the ribs, Dorian wished he knew the man’s name. It would be a name worth moaning. _Bull_ , he thought, and wondered why before his eyes flickered up to the horns. Those were plenty bullish. Ideal for goring Vints, he imagined. Not the manner of goring Dorian had in mind for this morning.

“You smirking at something?” the man asked.

“You,” Dorian said lightly. He raised his hand to the base of a horn then paused; when the man didn’t pull away, Dorian grasped it. Tugged. The sturdiness of the horn was heady. Dorian dragged his thumb nail against the grooves in the bone near the scalp, and the man practically purred. “My bull,” Dorian said teasingly, though he was not sure which of them he was teasing. Then Dorian met the man’s eye and faltered. The fondness there was unnerving. So was the wonder. The stranger was looking at Dorian with a kind of delighted shock that melted back under Dorian’s gaze to something more neutral.

“Yeah,” the man said. “I like that.”

“You like what?”

“You calling me yours.”  

Dorian thought about saying something like _that’s rather a lot to say after just one night_ , but somehow he kissed the man instead. Wasn’t sure how that happened. Maybe he was still drunk from the night before. Didn’t matter. There was a scar on his bull’s surprisingly soft lips that was absolutely fascinating and demanded all of Dorian’s attention.

Underneath him, the man groaned, his hands tightening on Dorian’s hips, and Dorian keened at the size and strength of his grasp. _Maker, if he put both his hands on my waist, I bet his fingers would touch. What must last night have been?_ Dorian pressed forward hungrily, dove into the sensation of the bull’s lips on his, the bull’s body under his, half for the pleasure of the present, half to try and trigger any memory of the night before. Dorian hated being cheated out of his pleasure. Regardless of whether his past self had enjoyed the night, it was pointless if the present Dorian couldn’t as well.

“Fuck, Dorian,” the bull said, and didn’t that make Dorian feel like shit. Now there was no possibility of the shameful comradery of the morning after, the helpless laughter when you shared mutual ignorance of how you got there. No, Dorian had decided to fuck a _considerate_ stranger. Rookie mistake. They’d pulled apart just enough to speak, their foreheads pressed together. “I’m glad you stayed.”

What a strange gratitude in his words.

“My good fellow," Dorian said pulling back, sparing a moment for vanity's sake to smooth his moustache. "If you've nothing better to do this morning, would you kindly fuck me?"

Across the fresh distance between them, no more than a handbreadth—a normal, reasonably sized hand—but somehow to far, the stranger laughed. "Shit, big guy, you're polite this morning."

"I'm always polite," Dorian said. "I could choose to be offended by that."

"You could." The stranger ran his hand down Dorian's back, and Dorian shivered at the steady confidence of its promise. "I like you bratty."

"How dare you," Dorian said simply, and with some judicious understanding of bodily physics, rolled over and brought the bull down on top with him. They kissed a while longer like that, Dorian bracketed by the man's arms, at risk of smothering from the man's mass. It was divine. He was the man held up the sky.

"Oil," Dorian murmured as the bull began to kiss his neck.

"I got you," the bull replied. The words went straight to Dorian's cock. So did the pain, sharp as the man's teeth, when he bit Dorian's shoulder. Then he lathed the spot with his tongue, kissed it, then bit it again for good measure.

"This isn't fucking," Dorian said, somewhat strained from the effort.

The bull lowered himself, kissing his way down Dorian's chest. Dorian watched the horns with some interest. Those were an exciting new addition to his bedroom experience. The man seemed to have no issues with Dorian touching them, had delighted in it earlier, but grabbing them seemed like grabbing a sword and being surprised it cut you.

Then the bull grabbed Dorian's legs and pushed them wider, leaned in and kissed his inner thighs along the bruises—last night's, no doubt—that constellated his skin. Dorian couldn't help but grab the horns then, and he couldn’t even begrudge his bedfellow his smirk, pressed so deliciously against Dorian’s skin.

 

 

 

Three orgasms later—divided surprisingly in Dorian’s favor—Dorian lay boneless on what was now officially the most comfortable mattress in the world. His bull lay next to him, propped up on an elbow and playing with a fucked out curl of Dorian’s hair. Dorian would stop him any moment now, slap the man’s hand away and tell him that they were both too old for one of them to be making a _boing boing_ noise as he tugged on a ringlet curled with sweat, and further if someone has gone to such effort to straighten their hair, it was universally in bad taste to torment them when the straightening was gone. Dorian would tell him that any moment now. He simply needed to regrow most of the vital functions of his body. He seemed to have ejaculated most of his somatic nerve function that last round.

If having had their unexpected second round the bull wished Dorian now gone, he made no show of it. He was still smiling down at Dorian with such a dopey look that Dorian could only speculate at what feats of sexual willingness and wonder he'd performed the night before. If it compared to what had happened this morning, Dorian wouldn’t be in any rush to kick himself out of bed either.

The bull abandoned Dorian’s scalp to brush the tip of one finger against Dorian's moustache, so softly Dorian shivered. "You're crooked, kadan," he teased.

“Always.”

The bull ran his thumb across Dorian's lips. "It's a good look."

Nice to have a bedpartner with some sense for once. Felix would approve.

Felix.

Felix, who was waiting in Redcliffe.

Everything that was warm chilled. Dorian opened his eyes. He met the gaze of the stranger next to him, who was still smoothing Dorian’s moustache like it was the softest fur. “I’m afraid I have to be off,” Dorian said. He was surprised to discover that he actually was sorry. He gave his bull another kiss to soften the loss of Dorian’s inimitable presence; he lingered a little longer than he intended.

His bull hummed as Dorian pulled away. “You going back to stare at old family trees?”

Dorian wasn’t sure what he’d said the night before that would have prompted that response, but it seemed in-character enough for fake small talk about his usual activities. Research was dreadfully dull sometimes. “Alas. Today’s a travel day.”

“Oh? I didn’t know you were heading out on a mission.”

Dorian frowned. “I am traveling with a purpose, if that’s what you mean.”

His bull frowned in return and sat up. “Where?”

“South,” Dorian said cautiously. Redcliff was the known gathering place of all the rebel mages. As charming as the man had been, Dorian did not wish to test his tolerance for mages.

“Further south than here?”

“I know, it’s disgusting. Thedas ought to stop at the Free Marches.”

The bull didn’t laugh. He just kept looking at Dorian, as if waiting for some punchline. “The boss know about this trip?”

“I don’t have a boss,” Dorian said. He snorted. “I’ve not fallen that low yet.” He kicked off the blankets left covering him with an unexpected disappointment. It had been a pleasant morning, and now the mood was shifting as it inevitably did, to something strained and awkward as circumstances between two naked strangers must necessarily be. Stupid really, to have expected something else.

“Fine. Does Ayan know about this trip?”

Dorian winced when he set his bare feet on the stone floor, and scanned about for his clothes. “I’m afraid I don’t know who that is.” There, on the chair by the hearth. Someone last night had folded them. It was a shame he couldn’t have risked casting a fire from the bed. His clothes would have been toasty warm by now. Instead, he shuddered as he pulled up his icy smallclothes. “Why would anyone live down here?” he asked, mostly to himself. His pants were stiff with cold—the weather must have changed dramatically since yesterday, when it had been nippy but not nearly this freezing, and the leather had as much suppleness as Dorian currently did. It was like trying to dress himself in wood.

The leather. Dorian paused. He had not recalled the leather of his travelling outfit being so dark as this. And the folded, waiting robes as well, they were dark blue rather than white, and of a thick padded style Dorian had never seen before. There was white fur around the cuffs and neckline, and a black full-sleeved undershirt of a fabric he didn’t recognize. He recognized the quality of the outfit, but not the outfit itself.

“I think—” Dorian started, then frowned. “These must be someone else’s.”

“Dorian,” the man cautiously. Dorian didn’t like that tone. It seemed to have something to do with the axe resting nearby, not in hand yet, no, but also cautious. Waiting for an answer that Dorian didn’t know. “Where are you going today?”

He was almost naked, freezing in a strange man’s room. If he was ever in a mood for an interrogation, it wasn’t now. “If you must know,” Dorian snapped, “I am meeting a friend of mine on an issue of some importance and great urgency. And that is already more than you are entitled to.”

“Who else do you know?” the man asked bluntly.

Dorian glared. He dressed in the strange pants. Whatever other idiot had slept with the man and left them here had better not hope to get them back. “I thank you for what was a charming night, I’m sure.” Dorian pulled on the shirt. His staff was bound to be somewhere, not in this room obviously, but most likely stashed away nearby. Maybe the inn’s barn, that was usually a safe place. Dorian hoped he hadn’t wasted money renting his own room, but if he had, it would be easy enough to find his things. “I’ll excuse myself before you think to try marking your territory.”

The stranger rose out of bed, wrapping a sheet around his waist in previously absent discretion. “Dorian—” he said, stepping forward.

Dorian raised his hand and cupped fire in his palm. 

The stranger froze.

“That’s close enough, I think,” Dorian said. He snuffed the flames—and any chance of a pleasant goodbye—with a quick close of his fist. He needed his staff. Dorian was a fine mage, one of the finest if he might say, but he didn’t relish his chances against a qunari unarmed.

If only the beast had just let him _leave_. Stupid, stupid—Dorian ought to be blaming himself. He was the one who wanted to linger, and now a savage overly interested in his morning plans loomed between him and the door.

The beast put up his hands. His face was a smooth neutral. He could have done quite well in Val Royeux, with a mask like that. “I’m not threatening you, Dorian. You can leave whenever you want. You always can.”

“I don’t require your permission.” Dorian snatched up the robe still folded on the chair—he wouldn’t leave behind good clothes to trudge half naked through the Maker’s grand southern mistake.   

“No, you don’t, big guy,” the beast concurred. The stranger. The man. The bull. Dorian wished he could remember the fellow’s name, it would have been easier that deciding what moniker he warranted each time. He spoke to Dorian like a wild animal, or perhaps a startled one. Dorian hoped it was the former; that was more flattering.

He stepped away from Dorian, around and back until he had put the bed between them. His one eye studied Dorian intently. “I’ll help you get where you’re going if you want, or I’ll piss off. Whatever you want. I just want to ask you if you know where you are.”

“Piss off, I think,” Dorian said. “That’s the one I pick.”

But the question stuck, as no doubt the questioner intended it. Dorian had assumed this was the interior of the inn he’d had the misfortune to reach last night, at this sorry excuse for a crossroads. But the inn had only one floor, with the rooms right off the dining room, and the dinner room had been wooden, old wood, shitty wood, nothing like this. Dilapidated as it was, the stone and windows of this room suggested a past grandeur that the inn didn’t have the imagination to dream of. And there had been mountains on the southern horizon. Dorian didn’t see them now, but he did see the wide open sky, nothing like the forest he’d been passing through. The sunlight streaming through has the pale white clarity of altitude.

Dorian glanced back at the stranger on the other side of the bed, who had made no move towards him while his attention was elsewhere. His hands were still up. A strange gesture, from a man with two spears on his head. Those hands had left delicious bruises on Dorian’s hips, bruises that he supposed must be sinister now. “You’ve kidnapped me.”

“No, no, no,” the stranger said quickly, and it was oddly satisfying to watch his composure break for a moment, the panic that flashed through. “Fuck, no. You came here last night, Dorian. Late, from the library. We didn’t do anything.”

Dorian snorted. “You should pick your lies better. I’ve bruises that say otherwise.”

The stranger flinched, and it was less satisfying this time, the look of stricken horror that arrived. The neutral mask was gone. “Those are older.”

“So you fucked me often,” Dorian said. How had he lost so much time? Drugged, maybe, or blood magic. _Maker_ , not blood magic—not someone else living in his body while Dorian slumbered.

_It worked, it worked, Father’s ritual worked I didn’t escape and he got what he wanted and someone else was his son and walked around with my legs and spoke with my mouth and where am I how did I get here who did what to me while I wasn’t there—_

“Dorian, breathe, breathe,” the man said urgently as Dorian staggered back. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t breathe. The spell had worked, and Dorian’s father had hollowed him out, had loved his son as a ventriloquist dummy, had risked Dorian left behind like a puppet with cut strings, Maker, he couldn’t breathe, his heart was pounding, he couldn’t breathe and the room was spinning and shrinking and shrinking until Dorian was buried alive—

He fell. But he didn’t fall. He was standing and then he was on the ground, but without the pain of falling. He was sitting. Kneeling. Too upright for the fetal position but only just. And the man, the bull, he was there too, not touching but close, the heat of his hand lingering on Dorian’s arm even after he let go, and he told Dorian to breathe, to breathe. Everything was alright but Dorian needed to breathe.

“In and out,” the man said slowly, deeply. “In and out. In and out. In and out.”

“I know how to breathe,” Dorian snapped, after he had copied the man’s instructions until he remembered.

The man moved back but stayed close, his hands raised in peace again. Dorian swallowed the bile in his mouth. “I doubt you need your hands to kill me.”

“I won’t hurt you,” the man said. “We’ll get your staff, you’ll feel safer with it.”  

Dorian believed him. He couldn’t trust that feeling, but there it was. The man-bull-savage-bedmate either lied well or not at all; the worry in his eye was troublingly honest. And Dorian’s heart was still pounding, his head still spinning, as he reached his hand out and pressed it against this stranger’s massive chest, as if he were bracing himself. Maybe that really was why he did it. He couldn’t think of another reason to lean into the man now.

Strange to report that the stranger’s heart was pounding too.

“Well,” Dorian muttered. “I don’t imagine my father blood magicked me into fucking you.”

The stranger didn’t seem to find that funny. After Dorian’s hysterical laughter petered out, he decided he didn’t really either.


	2. Chapter 2

His name was The Iron Bull.

"The?" Dorian asked.

"The," The Iron Bull replied, not looking at Dorian. Without undoing the blanket tied around his waist, he stepped into what might charitably be described as pants.

"The horns, I take it," Dorian said. "You struck me as a bull, you know. Are there other people wherever we are?"

"Yeah, plenty. We're above the tavern. It should be cleared out. We can go along the parapet, we shouldn't run into many people up there."

Strategic sounding, though Dorian could not help the strange bitterness that came with the thought that, as strange as the circumstances were, Dorian would once again be slinking out of a man's bedroom, praying no one would see him. Plus ça change, as the Orlesians say. Whether you fuck an altus in Minrathous or a qunari in the south, it was the same game. Dorian said, "I ask because I wasn't sure if you were aware that people might see you."

When The Iron Bull looked at him, Dorian nodded pointedly at the canvas sail someone had mistaken for trousers.

The Iron Bull neither laughed nor looked offended. He looked quite neutral indeed, like a man withdrawn from himself. A house full with people but the curtains closed.  The look disturbed Dorian, though he wasn't sure why. Perhaps simply because they'd previously wrung so many sweet emotions from each other before this morning's unexpected derailment. Dorian shook his head and said, in the arch tone that he had discovered he loved so dearly to use with southerners, "If you're hoping I'll tear them off a second time merely to remove them from my sight, your plan might be an unexpected success."

"You seem like you're doing better," The Iron Bull said.

"You are not the first man I've woken up next to with no memory of how I got there," Dorian said. "The novelty is not the situation but the scale."

 _If my father did this to me, I'll kill myself,_ Dorian thought. And then amended _, I'll wait to see what he's made me do, then I'll address the matter_. No reason to escalate to immediate suicide when bloody revenge might be in order first. Dorian considered that it might be a shame to waste a body like his on such a destructive choice, but that was what Dorian's father thought as well. Hardly a compelling argument.

"We need to tell people," The Iron Bull said. "This feels like magic crap."

"A good enough guess," Dorian said. "I take it you are not an expert in magic crap?"

"We got people who are. Ma'am, Fiona, the mages—crap, Solas is off with Ayan. He could help. Could go talk to a spirit of whatever. Shit, they took Cole with them too."

"We needn't expand the circle too dramatically," Dorian said.

The Iron Bull nodded. "You're among friends, but you got no reason to believe that. We have to tell someone though." He sounded altogether too thoughtful and considerate. Dorian considered telling him what a turnoff that was.

"Tell the stable master, have him saddle me a horse," Dorian said. "Felix will help me when I meet up with him."

The Iron Bull didn't respond.

"He's the friend I'm meeting," Dorian supplied. “He’s a wretched mage, but he’s from Tevinter so that means he knows a thousand times what any Southern hedge witch might.”

The Iron Bull ground the heel of his hand into his remaining eye as if he wished to squish that one out as well. "Fuck," he said, mostly to himself.  

"Indeed," said Dorian who was starting to feel quite hungry and could not say with any certainty when the last time he ate was. "A good summation of the morning."

 

 

 

The advisers to the southern religious army cult were two women who looked deadly in a familiarly elegant way and, more alarmingly, a man. His posture screamed templar and his hair screamed a deficient knowledge of quality haircare products. He was the commander of all the shining swords in the castle, and he surprised Dorian by greeting him warmly before The Iron Bull said coldly, "We have a problem."

The Iron Bull conveyed the situation in a few terse sentences, the words of a man used to report. "Memory loss?" asked the woman in decked in the gold Antivans so favored (say what you would about Tevinter—Dorian himself could say many, many things—but they understood how to drape themselves in gold crepe _tastefully_ ). She looked between Dorian and The Iron Bull as if waiting for one of them to explain the joke.

The cloaked woman with her hands clasped behind her back said nothing but studied Dorian so intensely he glanced down to confirm he was fully dressed. She undressed him in his eyes—less attraction than vivisection.

"I already sent Krem to get Ma'am," The Iron Bull said. "I couldn't see any injury on his head, no sign of brain damage, no fever or anything." The memory of The Iron Bull, cradling Dorian's head as Dorian collapsed to the ground, came to Dorian now: The Iron Bull's immense hands sweeping gently through his hair, across his skin, with a clinical gentleness that was a strange cousin to the tenderness of the bed.

The golden Antivan asked, "Could it be magic then?"

The templar's hand, which had rested on the hilt of his sword since Dorian and The Iron Bull entered the war room, tightened. You could have used the thin pressed line of his lips as a ruler. "What's the last thing he remembers?" he asked The Iron Bull.

"My manners," Dorian said crossly. "Far more than I can say for the south."

Astonishingly, the templar snorted. "You can't have lost that much of yourself," he said dryly.

“I’ve lost nothing,” Dorian said. “Merely misplaced it, a day north of Redcliffe.”

“Before you joined us,” said the hooded woman, who turned out to be Orlesian. She was almost certainly Sister Nightingale, the Left Hand of the White Divine. Strangely, it was this that seemed the most unsettling realization thus far. Dorian had come south a refuge with aspirations of usefulness; somehow now, a shadow power in Southern Thedas was personally pondering the state of his mental health.

This might be what people called failing upwards.

"Ayan is still in the Emprise," the commander said. He looked at Dorian with a curious look. It didn't look like a stabbing sort of look at the moment, but southern templars were mad dogs on a short leash. Dorian wouldn't bare his neck to him. "She wanted you to go with her, but decided to take Solas instead. It was a personal favor to you, as I heard it."

"Exclusion is a favor?" Dorian asked.

"Emprise is covered in snow," The Iron Bull said.

"A great favor," Dorian agreed. "I shall have to thank her. Write a fond letter, post it from Redcliffe."

"There's nothing in Redcliffe for you," the Nightingale said. "The mages have long moved on."

Dorian was not concerned with the presence of mages in general, but he obliged them by asking, "To where?"

The Nightingale pointed out the window at the tower, a different shade of rock than the parapet it stabbed up from. "There. The Inquisition allied with the free mages of the south to close the Breach. You were helpful in that regard."

"Of course," said Dorian. "I live to be helpful. When was the Breach closed?"

The unfortunate nature of the answer was implied in how the advisers glanced at The Iron Bull. It was the look of people asking someone else to break the news. Strange that it did not seem strange that they would ask it of The Iron Bull. Dorian did not know the man, but he seemed the sort to break news gently. He had that kind of grace about him, the grace of a stallion in a small place, mindful not to trample anyone to death. (Dorian had nearly thought “bull in a china shop” instead, but he suspected that would be playing right into The Iron Bull’s hands.)

"About two and half years ago," The Iron Bull said. “A few months after you joined up.”

"Ah," said Dorian.

He decided, on reflection, that perhaps he would like a chair.  

Two and half years. And then some. It couldn’t be true. It didn’t feel false. Three years. He’d left Tevinter promising he’d return in a few months. When everything settled down. When Felix was safe, when Alexius had regained his sense. He had not ceded the country to his father. He had merely had business that brought him away from it. For three years.

“Am I over thirty?” Dorian asked with horror.

“Cruel to make him relive _that_ birthday,” the Antivan muttered to the Nightingale. It sounded affectionate, worried and affectionate, and that disturbed him.

It was not that he believed them, but that he had no concrete reason beyond paranoia not to. That was not insufficient cause—paranoia had kept Dorian alive this far, was the only reason he was not a vegetative lump or a neutered puppet of a husband. But they did not seem like they were lying. Dorian did not feel like he should distrust them. It was a strange feeling, and so he distrusted that feeling instead.

If they were not lying, if they were right—"I must be off nevertheless," Dorian said. "I am to meet a friend."

"Felix Alexius," the Nightingale said softly.

"Yes. He's waiting in Redcliffe with the mages."

"The mages are here, Dorian."

"What? Yes. I—" Dorian rubbed his temple. "I am due to meet him."

The sun was bright today, and it glinted off the snow—the _snow_ , what a barbarian clime—on the roof of the buildings. How anyone could stand it, he didn't know. Felix had enjoyed the snow when he'd come south, studied for a year at the grand University of Orlais where he said Orlesians had very nearly stopped spitting on him every time he entered a room. He liked the snow, but he hadn't been sorry to leave it. It was the sort of thing one ought to see at least once, he said, but not much more than once. Still, he had written to Dorian of his first snow flurry, and the children on the streets of Val Royeux who showed him how to catch snowflakes on his tongue, and how hard they had laughed at him when, lost looking up to the sky, he tripped over a curb and fell hard on his ass. He'd been bruised purple for a week, which was miserable of course when it came to sitting in classes, as the Orlesians believed in the uninterrupted lecture. A ghastly way to learn but Dorian supposed that was the sort of quality you could expect in the—

"Dorian," said a voice gently, and Dorian looked away from the window to The Iron Bull. The Iron Bull looked at him with an eye as soft as the snow on the roof. "Did you hear what I said?"

"That it's been three years," Dorian repeated. "Yes, I caught that. Felix will have moved on by now, of course. Has he come here as well?"

The Iron Bull stared at him. The other three advisers did as well. The Antivan—the ambassador, Dorian surmised, if for no other reason that she seemed the most personable—had a hand pressed to her mouth. She was pretty. She could do well in Tevinter. She looked nothing like Livia, who was unnaturally fair and never went outside so as to best preserve the fresh milk of her delicate skin. Felix had known her, actually. They had studied together in the Circle, back when Gereon was still trying to make a mighty mage of his only son. Livia was good at healing apparently. Good for her. Dorian had always hated healing. Healers were always sent to the battlefields, even healers who were scions to houses and had better things to do than to patch up dying mages so they may go back onto the field and die a little more. Livia had been to Seheron for her studies. Dorian had been the brothels of Minrathous. They were never meant to be.

"Dorian."

"What?" Dorian snapped at The Iron Bull, who apparently did not know how to let a man simply think.

The Iron Bull pulled up the chair beside Dorian, sat down in it with the delicacy of a man used to testing what will hold his weight. (Very hot, Dorian's cock helpfully offered, which was hardly the priority right now even if it was undeniably true.) "What did I just say?"

"Three years ago," Dorian repeated slowly. "I promise you, I heard."

"Is this magic?" the commander asked. There was no surprising warmth in his voice now. Just the expected cold. The Nightingale who did not take her eyes from Dorian's face. He sounded worse. She said nothing.

"I've lost the memory of three years," Dorian said. "It isn't ideal either way."

"You've lost more," said the Nightingale.

Dorian raised an eyebrow at her. When she said nothing, he looked to The Iron Bull and was shocked to discover the grim set of his ruggedly handsome face. It should have made him more attractive. It did not. It merely made him look sadder. "I told you about Felix, kadan," The Iron Bull said. "Do you know what I said?"

“You haven’t said anything.”

“That’s not true.”

Felix would think it quite strange, the scene before Dorian now. A qunari, hunched in front of Dorian as if to make his vastness smaller. A southern Templar behind him, his hand resting on the hilt of his sword. Dorian hoped he could relay the strangeness of this morning to his best friend sometime soon; he hoped no person in this room wished to impede him in that task.

“I’ve forgotten the extent to which the south is a miserable wasteland,” Dorian said. “Do you people do breakfast?”

The Iron Bull blinked. Or winked. Dorian supposed that for him every blink was a wink. “Are you listening?”

“To my growling stomach,” Dorian said, and stood. “We worked up an appetite this morning and you still have yet to feed me. Truly, the hospitality thus far has been underwhelming.”

The Iron Bull stayed seated, gaping up at him. A novelty, Dorian was sure. How often does a figure like that get to look up to a pretty face? The ambassador stepped forward. “This is not right,” she said.

“I’m glad you agree,” said Dorian. “It’s nearly eleven.”

“Blood magic,” the commander said, and Dorian felt bile in the back of his throat. “It must be.”

“It might be,” said the Nightingale. “The mind is a curious thing. With or without magic.”

“Maybe the same demon that took Lavellan’s memories took Dorian’s as well,” said the ambassador, before she frowned. “But why now?”

“I am right here,” Dorian snapped. “If you wish to discuss me like I am not, I would be happy to leave the room.”

“You aren’t here,” The Iron Bull said, but quietly, as if to no one but himself. Yet Dorian heard.

“I am,” Dorian told him, “and I am hungry. If I’ve lost three years of my life, I may well suffer the loss on a full stomach.”

 

 

 

They evidently decided that Dorian—wicked malificar of supreme malevolence who had wrangled the most nefarious magic of all, self-induced amnesia—was allowed to eat. But not with other people. Having developed the kind of stress headache that was currently making him paranoid about brain tumors, Dorian could happily agree to the condition of solitude. They put him in the ambassador’s office with the door firmly shut and sent a page off for a meal. “You might poison me,” Dorian said conversationally to The Iron Bull, who kept him company. He wouldn’t join Dorian on the ambassador’s couch, no matter how alluringly Dorian left the space next to him open, but he loomed appealing by the fire which was sufficient aesthetic pleasure. “All of Tevinter would think me laughably naïve.”

“You don’t give a shit what Tevinter thinks,” The Iron Bull said. "That's not like you."

Dorian raised an eyebrow. "It's eminently like me. I don't know how well you know me if you think otherwise." He folded his (still elegantly manicured, he was pleased to discover, although unsettlingly calloused) hands in his lap. "I don't know how well you know me at all."

The Iron Bull looked away. Strange. Not a man Dorian would have pegged as sheepish. "Yeah," The Iron Bull said, and scratched his head. "We're. Uh. We're close."

“I surmised,” Dorian said.

Dorian did not say, _you’re in love with me_. He did not clarify, _you’re in love with the man you think I am._

A strange thought. Only one man had ever been in love with Dorian, and he’d recognized the look on Rilineus’ face too late to do anything about it. The Iron Bull had that, had worn it this morning when Dorian had failed to place it yet again. A sort of softness around the corner of the eyes. A sort of despair. Easier to recognize when focused at someone other than himself. The Iron Bull aimed it at a distant future of the man who sat in front of him. He didn’t love Dorian. He loved Dorian’s potential. That, at least, Dorian knew what to do with.

“I’m Tal-Vasoth,” The Iron Bull said. “If that helps with the trust.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Dorian said as a page brought in a tray of horrifically southern food. “If you poison me, it will have no international political undertones and will only be for your own satisfaction.”

The Iron Bull did not smile at that, which Dorian supposed made sense if, in fact, The Iron Bull did love him.

Dorian ate his porridge and sausage sat across from an alleged Tal Vasoth with a soft spot, it seemed, for strays and hopeless cases, and he thought stealing a horse. He’d need one to find Felix, and he couldn’t imagine the Inquisition would just give him a steed. Either they were truly concerned about him, or more likely they considered the Altus from Tevinter with a memory problem to be a liability they couldn’t allow to slip away. Or perhaps they’d simply be glad to get rid of him. Dorian could do that. Dorian could offer them an easy solution to this problem before the templar with the sword thought of one himself.

Felix was still waiting for Dorian in Redcliffe (except he was not, and Dorian needed to remember that, though the fact would not stick in his head). Felix needed Dorian's help, would give Dorian all the help he could offer. Felix was waiting, and Dorian would find him. He'd been tracing Felix by magic for weeks now--or, he had traced Felix by magic for weeks nearly three years ago. Tenses were getting complicated. It would be simple enough to do it again. Felix's magic, limited little creek bed that it was, was sympathetic to Dorian's after all their time together. They could find each other anywhere.

Strange, Dorian thought without much urgency, which was the strange part. He was much calmer this time around about his mind being meddled with. Evidence that his mind had already been meddled with. Or perhaps like most things, the erosion of yourself is easier to face the second time around.

 

 

 

Vivienne was tall, dark, and beautiful, with a manicure that felt like a threat when she pressed her fingers against Dorian’s temples. Her magic tickled the inside of Dorian’s skull. She tsked. “Really, my dear, you do make things so complicated.”

“Apologies if my grey matter is not up to your exacting standards,” Dorian said. It came out more crossly than he meant, but it was hard to keep your hand close to your chest while also barricading your anatomy within your own magic. Vivienne’s spirit had prodded his a few times, but she let his barriers stand without protest. Otherwise, she swept her magic over Dorian’s body with the same thoughtless authority with which she’d commandeered Ambassador Josephine’s office. It was almost comforting, in a way that put Dorian in mind of visiting the healer as a small child. Vivienne gave off the impression of someone who considered herself the only adult in a room full of children.

The Iron Bull stood by, watching, his arms crossed. When Vivienne’s magic pressed too closely, Dorian’s eyes flickered to him. And then Vivienne’s magic retreated. Embarrassing, to have such an obvious tell. But judging from his own relief when Vivienne drew back, coiling the tendrils of her spirit back against her, perhaps he needed the coddling. Perhaps he’d gotten soft here in the south, soft and obvious with a looming bodyguard in the corner who asked anxiously when Vivienne pressed her fingers together, “What is it, Ma’am? Magic?”

“I can find nothing anatomically wrong,” Vivienne replied. “So yes, I imagine this is most likely magic. Or, considering the other primary symptom, psychology, which would be far worse. At the moment, let us hope it’s magic.”

“Is that better or worse for me than a giant malignant brain tumor?” Dorian asked, his mouth dry and tasting of bile as he braced his arms on the windowsill. The winter air, the wet cold smell of snow, reminded him of nothing from home. It helped. Vivienne had been gentle, professional, insomuch as a stranger probing your mind can be. But it seemed some memories persisted. His father had tried to be gentle too. Dorian could recall that, which hardly seemed fair. If he had to lose a chunk of his life, could he not have lost that memory as well?

“It depends,” said Vivienne. “I know how to address a tumor or a bleed or a stroke. I know when healing in those circumstances is hopeless. I do not know the cause of this. I am not sure how to cure it.”

The Iron Bull looked startled. Dorian could understand that. Vivienne did not seem like a woman taken to admitting ignorance.  “Then what?” The Iron Bull asked.

“I find out the cause of it. Then I cure it.” Vivienne cast her gaze towards Dorian. “One more step, darling. That is all.”

“Blood magic,” Dorian said. “That’s the cause.”

“There are variations in blood magic, my dear. Do you have any suggestions for winnowing it down?”

Dorian clenched his jaw. “None.” It was honest. He had no idea what spell his father had tried. “Maybe it was my work. You said I was researching something. What was it?”

“Genealogy.”

Dorian grimaced. “Have I become that boring in my dotage?”

Vivienne made a noise too genteel for a snort. “Spare us the third decade of life histrionics,” she said. “They were unbearable enough the first time around.”

“Forgive me if my amnesia is inconvenient for you,” Dorian said with as much sarcasm as he could muster. “I know how intolerable it is to hear the same story twice.”

“Apology accepted,” Vivienne replied in such an arch tone it practically put him over its knee and spanked his bottom. “Perhaps something in those ancient Tevene texts did this. Books with their own protections are not unheard of.”

“How ancient are we talking?” Dorian asked.

“Magisters in the Black City ancient,” The Iron Bull said.

Dorian nearly rubbed his eyes, remembered his kohl, remembered that he hadn’t put it on this morning, what with all the fuss, and rubbed his eyes. “That ancient. Wonderful. Why was I interested in that?”

“An ancient asshole from Tevinter is trying to rule the world. You’re trying to figure out who might know him.”

“Is he a magister?”

“Was.”

“I hope he isn’t a distant cousin. We’re very in-bred, you know.” Dorian’s head hurt. The Iron Bull evidently lived above a tavern. Dorian would have to visit there before he absconded. “If I’ll be looking at books that old, I should be grateful they didn’t simply melt my eyes out of my skull. It’s a far faster defense.”

“No doubt that magic couldn’t get through your reading glasses,” Vivienne said. At Dorian’s aghast look, she said, sounding quite pleased with herself, “You so need them in your old age.”

“Ma’am,” The Iron Bull said.

Vivienne cast The Iron Bull a look, unreadable beyond her evident amusement that he did not return. . “Don’t worry, darling,” she said to Dorian. “You look fetching in them.” Then her eyes flicked down, to study her pure white talons that smelled like elfroot. She ran her thumb over the gloss of her nails as she said, “There was one curious thing, I found. There is—let’s call it scarring. On your mind, not your brain. On your spirit. The imprint of old magic like a scorch mark against a wall.”

“Is that what you think caused this?” Dorian asked lowly.

“No, not at the moment. The wall still stands. But it suggests a starting point, no?”

Dorian’s head ached. He kept his mouth shut.

“This is hardly the time for secrecy,” Vivienne said bluntly.

“What about privacy?” Dorian snapped.

“Hardly the time for that either.”

She sounded kind, Dorian thought bitterly, the way a scalpel is kind. Dorian was not inclined to feel grateful for that at the moment.

“Dorian,” The Iron Bull said softly, stepping forward but not too forward. A man afraid of looming over the crazy mage he thought he loved. “We gotta know. Ma’am’s gotta know. I can leave, if you want.”

 “You don’t know then,” Dorian said. “What it might be.” He leaned back against the sill, the wind playing with the nape of his neck. The Iron Bull looked at him imploringly. Dorian couldn’t stand it. He looked to Vivienne instead. “I’ll tell you. Just you.”

The Iron Bull’s shoulders slumped. He had the audacity to look relieved. “I’ll be right outside,” he said to Dorian, to Vivienne. He rubbed the back of his neck. “Or I can go. Get some more mages maybe, or ride for the Emprise—someone should get Solas.”

“No, darling, stay,” Vivienne said with infuriating certainty. “He needs you.”

The Iron Bull looked to Dorian.

The Iron Bull loved Dorian. How painfully clear that was now. And how painfully clear was this as well: Dorian must not love The Iron Bull in return. If he had loved The Iron Bull, then surely The Iron Bull would have known. Dorian would have told him, perhaps. Or The Iron Bull would have just known. Is that what love meant? That you let people know? You introduce them to your parents, or you explain why you never will.

A pity, really. The Iron Bull seemed a fine man, had certainly made a good first impression—those thighs, wrapped around Dorian, for example. There was a memory Dorian hoped to hold onto. And the softness of his hands. And the softness in his eye. But Dorian could not have loved him. That was Dorian’s fault, no doubt. He hadn't even loved Rilineus by the end of their time together. He'd loved him at the beginning of their time, sure, but the whole arc of their relationship had been nine months before it culminated in stillbirth, delivered on the wedding altar. Rilineus’ bride looked beautiful. Rilineus did as well. He looked at Dorian as he said, “I do,” and the belated vow disgusted Dorian’s pride. There was a time when love would have meant something. Rilineus had waited until it would mean nothing.

Felix had held Dorian as he fumed and cried, mostly at the same time. Felix had spared Dorian the I-Told-You-Sos that Dorian would have lavished upon himself had he so accurately predicted Rilienus's self-destruction. Felix never said anything of the sort. During the relationship, yes, of course, Felix could never be induced to keep his damn thoughts to himself on the matter of Dorian's active love life, but once it was over, and especially in the manner that it was over, Felix never said a word.

A good man. A good man. If Dorian was to have loved anyone—loved anyone in the way that poets described, as a beautiful thing to regard and touch—it should have been Felix, who had a heart that made beautiful everything about him. Dorian ought to have loved Felix, and since he didn't, it was evident that Dorian would never love anyone. Least of all a Tal Vasoth with one eye and a broken knee. Dorian might be attracted to the man know, might like the man know, might be glad of the man's company in this strange place with these strange people, but he could not love the man. He wasn't such a kind soul as to do that. Three years wouldn’t change that.

Rilineus had known Dorian had loved him and had fucked Dorian anyway. Dorian—the Dorian of Skyhold, the Inquisition, the three year exile of Tevinter—must know that Bull loved him. And Dorian had awoken in bed beside him.  The mirror wasn’t flattering.

Still, because Dorian was lonely and selfish and scared, because he had never learned how to tell himself no, he said, “Yes, please. Right outside.”

And The Iron Bull smiled, just with the corner of his mouth. “You got it, big guy.”

When the door closed behind him, Vivienne sat in the ambassador’s chair and waited. Dorian took a breath. When he said nothing, Vivienne asked, “Would you like me to guess?” When Dorian said nothing, she asked, “Is this related to your father?”

“Good guess.”

“You met with him in Redcliffe once,” Vivienne said. “I accompanied the party there.”

“My father came to Ferelden?”

“He tricked you into meeting, is my understanding.” She paused. “Our lady Inquisitor requested our discretion. I believe you discuss the matter with her. That is all I know.”

Dorian clenched his hands, in case they were pathetic enough to shake. “Well,” he said, shooting for breezy and failing, “if I’ve already discussed it once. No harm in saying it again.”

Vivienne waited.

Eventually, Dorian spoke.


End file.
